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Serendipity and hard work

By Rachel Robertson | Posted on 03/05/2013

Jen-Hsun Huang , co-founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, sat down on the steps of the atrium in Kelley Engineering Center to give a heartfelt talk to Oregon State University students. He shared his views on what was important on the path to founding and growing NVIDIA into a hugely successful visual computing technology company.

Huang came to Oregon State when he was 16 to start his degree in electrical engineering. One of the best things that came out of his experience here, he said, was meeting his wife, Lori Mills. In a class of about 80 students, three of whom were women, they were assigned to be lab partners.

“Serendipity matters a lot in success,” he said. “But she would not have been as attracted to me if it were not for the quality of my work.”

The students laughed, but he made the point that hard work matters in everything.

“The most important thing is to do important work — to do relevant work. Then you have to do it with the best of your might,” he said. “If you do that…you’ll be surrounded by the world’s best at what they do, and then almost anything is possible.”

NVIDIA, which pioneered the use of the graphic processing unit (GPU), is continuing to reinvent itself, expanding the reach of computer graphics into mobile devices and the cloud with new products such as the Tegramobile processor, SHIELD (a new Android gaming device) and GRID (which does for games what Netflix does for video).

Huang was visiting Oregon State to accept the College of Engineering’s Hall of Fame Oregon Stater Award, which honors outstanding OSU engineering alumni.

Read more about his talk at Oregon State's College of Engineering website.